Hadrian and the Herulians, live at the Hephaestion
O precious and sanctified blog! Once more, my corporate overlords have blocked my access to thee, after the blessed amnesty of a year or so. Were it not for this interference, I probably wouldn't still have stray memories of our August trip to Greece and Turkey to jot down. So, onward to other cool things about ancient Athens. With some photos, too.
Hadrian really left his mark on Athens. Both a gate and a library bore his name. The gate is now bereft of its wall, but is otherwise well preserved. The library now consists of mostly a wall and some foundations, but the wall interestingly still had some Greek Orthodox frescoes of the Last Supper on it from the time when the library was repurposed as a church; and immediately adjacent to the wall was an Ottoman mosque (now a museum). The mosque is to the far left of the second picture below, the fresco to the far right.
We visited the Agora, which reminded me a lot of Rome's Forum. First of all, because it was a deceptively simple name -- actually, there were two Agoras, the "ancient" agora and the oh-so-recent "Roman" agora, which reminded me of how Rome's "Forum" was really multiple "fora" that had merged together.
But more than just that, there was the fact that both are extensive archaeological parks. The Forum had sunk much deeper below the modern street level in Rome than the Agora had done in Athens, and the Agora had more trees, so I'm tempted to say that the Agora was the more pleasant of the two; although I think the ruins of the Forum were probably more intact overall.
Anyway, the star attraction of the Agora was surely the Temple of Hephaestus, which Wikipedia calls "the [world's] best preserved ancient Greek temple".
See what I mean about the Agora being a nicely lush park?
Another highlight was the Tower of the Winds, an octagonal structure that original had sundials, a weather vane, and a water clock, as well as allegorical statues of the winds for the eight compass points.
An interesting thing I learned from the signs and small museum of the Agora was that Athens was invaded by a tribe called "the Herulians" in 267 A.D. Wikipedia says they were Germanic and were soon thereafter defeated by Imperial forces. Nonetheless, it's interesting to think that there were barbarian incursions so deep into civilized territory well before the fifth century -- seems like a dress rehearsal for the collapse of the Roman Empire. The museum of the Agora claimed that Athens never recovered from the Herulians' invasion: they burned down the town, and most of the ancient buildings were never repaired.
Another interesting thing I learned from seeing these monuments was that most of them were built from "Pentelic marble" -- which, simply enough, was marble quarried from the neighboring Mount Penteli (which is where the wildfires this summer were). A neat thing about this kind of marble is that it's yellowy in color, and even seemed in some places to have turned to a salmon hue, perhaps through age and weathering, or maybe (alas) because of modern pollution.
One last thing: the rock formation the Acropolis sits on is pretty amazing. Pretty ideally suited for building a fort on top of. This photo hopefully gives an idea of how solid and huge the layer of rock under the Acropolis is.
Hadrian really left his mark on Athens. Both a gate and a library bore his name. The gate is now bereft of its wall, but is otherwise well preserved. The library now consists of mostly a wall and some foundations, but the wall interestingly still had some Greek Orthodox frescoes of the Last Supper on it from the time when the library was repurposed as a church; and immediately adjacent to the wall was an Ottoman mosque (now a museum). The mosque is to the far left of the second picture below, the fresco to the far right.
We visited the Agora, which reminded me a lot of Rome's Forum. First of all, because it was a deceptively simple name -- actually, there were two Agoras, the "ancient" agora and the oh-so-recent "Roman" agora, which reminded me of how Rome's "Forum" was really multiple "fora" that had merged together.
But more than just that, there was the fact that both are extensive archaeological parks. The Forum had sunk much deeper below the modern street level in Rome than the Agora had done in Athens, and the Agora had more trees, so I'm tempted to say that the Agora was the more pleasant of the two; although I think the ruins of the Forum were probably more intact overall.
Anyway, the star attraction of the Agora was surely the Temple of Hephaestus, which Wikipedia calls "the [world's] best preserved ancient Greek temple".
See what I mean about the Agora being a nicely lush park?
Another highlight was the Tower of the Winds, an octagonal structure that original had sundials, a weather vane, and a water clock, as well as allegorical statues of the winds for the eight compass points.
An interesting thing I learned from the signs and small museum of the Agora was that Athens was invaded by a tribe called "the Herulians" in 267 A.D. Wikipedia says they were Germanic and were soon thereafter defeated by Imperial forces. Nonetheless, it's interesting to think that there were barbarian incursions so deep into civilized territory well before the fifth century -- seems like a dress rehearsal for the collapse of the Roman Empire. The museum of the Agora claimed that Athens never recovered from the Herulians' invasion: they burned down the town, and most of the ancient buildings were never repaired.
Another interesting thing I learned from seeing these monuments was that most of them were built from "Pentelic marble" -- which, simply enough, was marble quarried from the neighboring Mount Penteli (which is where the wildfires this summer were). A neat thing about this kind of marble is that it's yellowy in color, and even seemed in some places to have turned to a salmon hue, perhaps through age and weathering, or maybe (alas) because of modern pollution.
One last thing: the rock formation the Acropolis sits on is pretty amazing. Pretty ideally suited for building a fort on top of. This photo hopefully gives an idea of how solid and huge the layer of rock under the Acropolis is.